A Single Shot by Matthew F Jones

Summary

John had a tough life. His father had been a farmer who taught his country boy son the rules for living off the land, the skills of the hunter. When they lost the farm, and John and his wife, Moira, ended up in a world bounded by the horizons of their trailer, he did what he had to. He got by as best he could.

Only so long a woman will put up with that life. Even the advice of his friend Simon is of no avail and he is left fending for himself. Hunting is what will fill his freezer and his belly. It wasn’t his fault that he chose to hunt on the same piece of land that others had chosen as a hiding place. It wasn’t the girl’s fault she wore clothes that looked like the hide of the wounded deer he was tracking. But from his single shot a train of events stretched out, in an inexorable torrent of violence and deceit. None of which would bring back his wife or persuade Daggard Pitt, the crippled runt of a lawyer, to help him.